How Google Family Helped Us Track Down a Lost Music Player

My son has been using a small Android-powered music player (a Mechen H1 Pro) at school for a while now. It helps him concentrate during work time, and the school allows it. The device is small enough to slip into a pocket, which is convenient but also problematic. Small devices have a habit of going missing, don't they?

Setup

When I first bought the music player, I set up parental controls. Since we already use Google Family Link to manage all our Android devices (phones, tablets, etc), adding Ross's music player to his account only took a few minutes. It gave us visibility into his usage, and controls which apps he can use and for how long. Importantly, I enabled location sharing and didn't set a PIN code to use the device (meaning anyone can use it - this is important, as you'll see).

Lost At School

Last week the inevitable happened. His music player had slipped out of his pocket somewhere during the day. Nobody had handed it in to the school office, and a quick check of the lost and found came up empty. He was understandably upset. Nerd Dad to the rescue!

My first instinct was to check the Family Link app for the device's last known location. Nothing. The device was offline, probably sitting in a pocket or backpack somewhere.

I'll admit, I considered wiping the device remotely there and then. But something made me hold off. Maybe it was optimism, or maybe I just wanted to give whoever found it a chance to do the right thing.

Location Updated

About an hour later, I checked the app again. No way! Somone had connected it to their WiFi and was playing music on Spotify. With the device online, I checked the location in Family Link... it was specific enough to narrow it down to two or three houses clustered together on a particular street.

Time for action! I locked the device remotely so it couldn't be used and hopped in the car.

Knocking On Doors

Standing on someone's doorstep asking about a lost music player feels a bit awkward, I'll be honest. I knocked on a couple of doors, explained the situation to one family, but nobody answered at the other houses. I headed home, a little defeated, but my wife decided to try again later that evening.

Getting It Back

Sometimes persistence pays off. When my wife tried again that evening, someone answered. They didn't have the device themselves, but they knew who did - a friend of theirs had found it and was apparently trying it out (hence why it had connected to WiFi and pinged its location).

After a couple more conversations, we had our music player back.

Why It Mattered

This whole experience reminded me why I bother with all the "digital parenting" setup in the first place. Yes, it takes a bit of time upfront to configure device management properly. Yes, it's another app to check and another thing to think about. But when your kid loses something important, having the ability to locate, lock or wipe is actually quite useful.

The Google Family Link location sharing isn't perfect - it needs WiFi to work, and it's not real-time tracking. But for situations like this, where someone finds a device and connects it to their network, it's incredibly effective.

More importantly, this reminded me that most people are fundamentally decent. Whoever found his music player could have just kept it, or thrown it away, or sold it. Instead, they took it home, probably out of curiosity, and when we came looking for it, they made sure it got back to us.